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I don’t usually write about trips that are mostly rock climbs (as opposed to hikes/glaciers/true peaks) but I figure I should start since it’ll hopefully be a solid chunk of my summer activity. So here is a spontaneous trip up Spontaneity Arete, an underrated climb I’ve had my eyes on since 2016. As many of you know I had a slow 2017 largely thanks to an abject lack of confidence following a friend’s climbing accident, and while it’s taken over a year, climbing is finally starting to feel good again.

We drove out Saturday afternoon so I had time to get house chores done. We went straight to Winthrop for food and two hours of me dreaming about a Mazama cabin after filling up gas at Marblemount (this is important later). We ran into our buddy Alexei in Winthrop, surprisingly the first time I’ve randomly run into someone I know out there. Robert destroyed a ribeye while I devoured a burger covered in pulled pork and oh how I wish they’d just have thrown the burger and pork in a trough for me it was so good.

Wish it was my den but I’d probably be evicted by a bear

We drove back out to WA pass to camp at the “trailhead” for Le Petit Cheval. The trailhead is more of a pullout on the side of the highway, but we set up our bivvies next to the car and got a solid night of sleep beneath the two stars that were occasionally not obscured by clouds. We got hit by a few raindrops, but not enough to make us worry.

Scrambling with the Needles in the back

We got up at 5 and headed up the approach at 5:30. It took us around 90min to get to the climb and we spent a lot of time looking for the route start. The approach is a pretty clear trail that has yellow blazes after you cross the snowfield (talus field in summer). It swings to the right of the talus field and then back left following ramps up to the start, where you cut further left in front of the large buttress you’re about to climb. It was much more pleasant than the gulley approach sounded, and finding blazes is like having a scavenger hunt and distracts from the uphill. The route start says something like “look for two corners and an old snag” and you’re standing there like there are 8 snags on this ledge and 5 corners?? But we found one that went.

Robert following the third pitch. Such a blast

I’m still not 100% convinced we were on the actual first and second pitch, but they went, and they were 5.7ish. I led the first pitch, which was a kitty litter corner (see, probably not the route) that we followed up to some rap tat. From that it was up another corner and around a small roof to a second set of tat. Maybe the pac man overhang is just dramatically photographed on Mountain Project but the mini roof wasn’t very pac man ish.

From there, and this is why I think the MP rating is so low (1.8 stars!), you need to scramble and hike another 15min. We eventually got impatient and said fuck it we’ll just climb to the ridge from here. So I started up and as soon as I pop up on the ridge maybe 25ft later boom we’re at the start of the 3rd pitch. I shouted back to Robert. I think I’m just gonna keep going. I dropped a big ass purple cowbell hex into a #3 crack. Save the #3 for later. Psh. Who needs cams when you have hexes.

Robert starts up the bomb ass fourth pitch

THE THIRD PITCH WAS AMAZING. I started laughing a few moves later and just said “oh my GOD” to which Robert shouted “everything okay?!” and I responded “it’s just so much FUN.” It was a fantastic mix of ledges and cracks with good pro and sharp holds. It could have gone on forever. I was having such a blast. I finally (sadly) found some tat and figured I couldn’t have had that much rope left anyway, so better stop here. Except the mantle to the left looks more fun than squeezing past a dead tree so I went that way and set up a gear anchor instead. I belayed Robert up, and heard him burst out laughing at the fat hex. It’s like leaving a joke behind for someone.

Come on guys they aren’t so bad. They make music as you climb!

Robert got up to the belay and continued on to the fourth pitch, where he followed a crack up to the right, faked me out and went left to duck under a roof which popped him out onto a beautiful short finger crack and dropped him off on a belay ledge (with more tat). He belayed me up and after fighting to retrieve a hex and a tricam he had placed I started up the fifth pitch. Oh and I made him move the belay so he’d have a better picture of me climbing.

Me starting up the fifth pitch (PC Robert)

We were worried about time, having taken like 4.5 hours for four pitches plus a 15min scramble. But we spent a lot of time looking for the start and figuring out the first two pitches and then looking for the 3rd pitch and at least now we were on a ridge where routefinding consists of “go up.” And I was thinking we had to be close. I cruised up these fantastic parallel cracks, scrambled a bit, wrapped around right and went up a juggy chimney sort of feature and set up my belay again nearly at the end of the rope. The rest to the top was just a scramble. So basically we did 5 pitches whereas MP says it’s 6 and the book says it’s 8. It’s a 600ft climb so if you do 8, they must be pretty short.

Robert just below the summit

We admired the views (Robert convinced me to make what I consider an exposed slabby move to get the best views) and then figured we needed to get our asses down since I was supposed to be getting dinner with a Peaks of Life climbing team to plan a fundraising climb the following weekend. We scrambled back to the first set of tat and started rapping down.

The raps are perfectly spaced for a 60m rope. Maybe one or two 4′ downclimbs. Not sure how many we did, maybe 9 rappels? Didn’t feel like that many but I think it was a lot. BRING YOUR APPROACH SHOES. The scramble sections and the “second approach” between pitches 2 and 3 were brutal in climbing shoes. Funnels of gravel straight into my shoes. We found the blazed trail again on the way down and were back at the car by 3pm.

Spicy move getting back around the summit boulder

This is a seriously awesome climb for someone looking to build confidence in swinging leads and leading 5.7. Most of the pitches didn’t feel like 5.7 and only the second pitch got a bit run out (but like I said, not sure we were on the true second pitch). The upper pitches are just fantastically fun, solid climbing and somehow we only ran into two other parties. One bailed after the second pitch and the others were still hiking up as we hiked out. So we basically had the whole thing to ourselves, which is insane for a 5.7 climb at WA Pass with a 1hr approach.

Robert throwing ropes in trees

It brought all of my rock climbing stoke back into action. I hate downclimbing and I did a fair amount of it on the way down and felt pretty good and the entire climb was just so solid, I never had the the frantic clip-and-take or the slam-and-jam or the hug-and-cry or the stuff-and-pray. Finally starting to feel like my 2016 climbing self again and hopefully it is only up from here. I left that pullout feeling on top of the world.

Between pitches 2 and 4

…and then we almost immediately ran out of gas. Which made no sense. Because we filled up in Marblemount and had only driven 157 miles. Some good samaritan Canadiens saved us (on Canada Day!) driving all the way to Mazama and back to us with a can of gas, and those two gallons of gas took us the 50 miles to Marblemount. Which for the record is a small miracle given my car averages 18 miles per gallon. The cars behind me probably weren’t too happy with my coast-at-40-mph-in-neutral-for-as-long-as-possibly. Pulling into the Marblemount gas station was the best feeling ever.

Second best, after topping out on a sweet climb. Or maybe third best after alpine bedtime. But I’m sure my relief was palpable as I filled my “20 gallon” tank with 21 gallons of sweet, sweet gasoline.

I. Hate. Log. Crossings. We can start with that. Ask me how many log crossings were on this trip. Actually don’t because I’ve probably blocked half of them from memory. I need to get a balance beam for my basement so I can work on my fear of log crossings. But this trip was good practice, and we did a lot of close-to-the-ground-log-walking during the bushwhack, and my confidence in log crossings grew over the course of 36hrs despite being stuck with Brad “Fearlessly Dances Across Logs” Geyer. He’d cruise across the log while I stood there having the “Okay can I do this maybe ugh should I no do I want to I don’t really want to but ah fuck you can’t just stand here ok GO” internal debate/pep talk. Oh, and on the way back I didn’t care about wet feet and said fuck the logs and waded anyway. Oh wait, that was most of the trip. “When life gives you lemons… say fuck the lemons and bail.” The frigid waters numbed my poor brutalized feet, which was a blessing in its own way.

So, I present to you: Luna Peak. I have a list that I call “The Selfish Ten.” It is ten peaks that I will bail on anyone and anything in order to complete. I’m sorta breaking that rule because I swore to JT I wouldn’t touch certain ones until he’s back, but besides those exceptions, the list stands. And Luna was on it. Doesn’t matter who, doesn’t matter when, it’s happening. And here was the opportunity. Cassie had pitched the idea months prior, and I said hell yes. Assuming weather is good. Because I’m fairweather all of a sudden.

Did I Trip: I had a full body posthole but that was the worst of it. Didn’t even fall off a log.

That… is the trail

We got the boat at 8am, which was the earliest they’d take us. In fact I think the driver (boater? Can you call him a captain if it’s a small motorboat?) was still asleep when we arrived at the dock around 7:45. By 8:30, we were hopping off the boat at the Big Beaver Trailhead, ready to start the first 10 miles towards Luna. The easy 10 miles.

By “easy,” I mean mostly flat. And mostly shady, and it was mostly cloudy anyway, and there aren’t twists and turns and there’s only one switchback in the entire 10 miles. To 39 Mile Camp it was beautifully maintained. Beyond that, we ran into one section where the creek became the trail (that took us a while to figure out), multiple sections with huge blowdowns (some had bootpaths around them, most were up and over), and if I’m really being a princess, some creeks that had to be waded but who am I to complain, I had way worse conditions coming up. Oh, and mosquitoes constantly threatening to bite your face and through your shirt and through your pants (I kept my goretex on try to eat that you dumb shits) and let me tell you the only thing that can make a log crossing more miserable is having mosquitos and biting flies swarming your face because the number of swatting motions you make is directly correlated with your likeliness to fall off of the log and into the river.

Who needs a knee anyway?

We made it to Luna Camp spurred by Cassie’s proud bargain hunting stories and outlet-store-gear-flipping dreams and the hour that it took me to understand what a packraft is (it’s cool and I want one). Just past Luna Camp, we took a 90 degree turn off the trail and headed at the log jam at 48.8395, -121.2090. This was like a mile closer to Luna camp than the log jams we had tried last year, which had all been underwater the first time. At first I thought it was the one, but there’s no WAY this huge one was ever underwater. There is another log jam at 48.8451, -121.2164 that we were told about on the way down that is closer to where Access Creek meets Big Beaver, saving you some schwacking, but let’s be real if you didn’t like schwacking you wouldn’t be here. Anyway, our crossing was a massive log jam that even I wasn’t scared of. Eve “Slowly and Timidly Tiptoes Along Logs” Jakubowski. There are logs 2ft across and the skinny ones are usually doubled up so you can still spread out (I like to be well grounded, okay? My legs are lazy unreliable bastards). And from there, it was a hundred feet of devil’s club dueling followed by varying log walks, fern clumps, skunk cabbage swamp hops, and pine needles getting stuck in my bun and sticking to my neck and we were at Access Creek, which is not very problematic if you’re already resigned to wading. If your feet are still dry, then I bid thee good luck.

Big ol’ Luna log jam

Are we having fun yet?

We started up on the north side of Access Creek. Near the creek was brushy and miserable, above the creek was mostly open forest with a few patches of annoying brush. Oh, spiderwebs abound. Just give up and let them dangle off of your face and live your worst nightmare with resignation and disgust. Just catch the occasional spider cause some are still hanging out in the webs. Cassie and Kyle announced they were going to bail around 2,800ft. Cassie had a “tweaked knee” that turned out to be a freaking torn MCL. That she tore on flat trail. Not on a log, not on the bushwhack, but on the beautifully flat trail. Cassie “Can’t Walk On A Flat Trail” Cassidy. So I’ve hiked with Cassie for like a net 8hrs and already know she’s a freaking bad ass who will always understate every injury. I’m sure her hike out was lovely with 1.7 knees.

How about now?!

My stoke went from like 9/10 to 0/10 real quick after that. I was enjoying the company, I was excited to share the summit, I had just met Cassie and Kyle, and now my only motivation was purely selfish and that’s not the right reason to climb a peak. Yeah it was on my selfish ten list, but I’ve calmed down a lot since I first started climbing and I don’t like summit fever/selfishness to be the only reason I keep going. I strongly deliberated turning back with them, but I knew Brad wanted the summit so I used that as my “non-selfish” excuse to keep going. I gave Cassie a look. “Don’t you dare argue with me.” She waggled her finger. “I CAN SEE YOU’RE ABOUT TO ARGUE WITH ME. NO. YOU GUYS ARE GOING.” I laughed. Shouldn’t have any guilt about continuing on here.

FINALLY a view of Luna! Don’t worry, you still need to wrap around another face of the peak

We tried crossing Access Creek at 3,000ft as suggested by a recent trip report but bailed back to the north side shortly because slide alder is the worst (and yay wading!). Standards were getting lower, we were getting lazier. We never quite found the bootpath, so we weren’t very fast but it wasn’t 100% miserable. I wasn’t as defeated as when I was lost on the way down from Snowfield, or coming down the Bachelor Creek drainage after the Ptarmigan Traverse. We crossed back to the south side at the usual 3,700ft, not really bothering to find a log crossing because like I said wading had become the norm. We popped out on some boulder fields that alternated with short, not-too-terrible stretches of slide alder, and as we finally reached the basin we saw two climbers on their way down. And I knew one of them!!

Brad coming up the couloir to the shoulder

Running into Ilia brought my stoke from like 2/10 up to like a 7. Perfect timing, I was so thrilled to run into someone I knew out in the middle of nowhere in one of the most remote ranges in the lower 48. But he brought up some concerns. It was already almost 5pm, and it had taken him and his buddy 6 hours from where we were to the summit. 2hrs to the SE shoulder of Luna, 2hrs to Luna Col, 2hrs to the true summit. Great. That would have us summitting at 11pm, which I didn’t want. We’d have to nap and immediately start heading out to make the 5pm boat if it took us 15hrs to summit. Well, we had a rough timeline, and we knew we had to beat it if we wanted to top out before sunset. Time to get moving.

Brad just after gaining the shoulder, Elephant Butte and the southern Pickets in the back

Luna Col up and left just out of frame

Ilia and Devin continued down as we went up. We swapped approach shoes for mountaineering boots and put on crampons for the gully which was surprisingly firm for the afternoon. It took us roughly 1:45 to the SE shoulder. At one point I wondered if this was irresponsible, but figured we’d see what happened. The question I ask myself dates back to John, my first climbing partner. “What would I do if I was alone?” I wasn’t sure. I figured I’d top out at the shoulder and make the call there if I was alone, so I kept moving. At the shoulder I was slightly below Ilia’s predicted time, so I shouted at Brad that we had to move faster and started out towards the snow field, cruising along heather slopes until I realized my ankles were bleeding. I had left my low socks on thinking my leggings would be enough to save my ankles from chafing, but I’m an idiot. I switched into different socks and caught back up. We followed Ilia’s tracks, our newly proclaimed spirit guide, and I knew we’d make it.

Fury watches over camp

Looking up at the false summit

At Luna Col, I just about lost my mind. Getting to the ridge is my favorite part of every climb, usually even better than the summit. Seeing the views on the other side, finally having the world open up beneath you after all the effort you’ve put in, it’s just spectacular. I checked the clock. ~1:15 from shoulder to col. I turned to Brad. “Dude, I think we have a shot.”

I kept moving and found a party of three already set up at a bivvy site, luckily they pointed to another patch just below them that we claimed as our own. We dropped our overnight gear and started up towards the summit at 8pm. It’s just a talus walk for 1000ft to the false summit with the views getting bigger and bigger until you’re on the false summit looking at the oddly diagonal true summit, wondering why the hell so few people come here and how no one has made a trail and sweet baby jesus how much traffic would this get if there WAS a trail? I take it all back, no one blaze anything. We heard the party back at camp whooping and whooped right back. Call and response in the mountains. The best.

Brad approaching the false summit, southern Pickets in the background

Looking at the true summit from the false summit

I told Brad to go first on the scramble. I don’t like exposure, but if someone goes ahead of me then I space out and end up in my own 3ft world and everything’s fine. And the ridge didn’t look bad at all. And we were on top of the world and it was sunset and there was an inversion layer to the north and if I didn’t have pictures I wouldn’t even believe this had all happened. When we got to the true summit we found the world’s tiniest summit register.

Like a sidewalk to heaven!

While Brad signed the register, I FaceTimed JT. What a freaking world. Enough 4G to do a quick video chat with someone in Afghanistan, that’s so wild. The connection wasn’t great so I couldn’t tell what he could actually see, but we were standing on the summit of a wicked remote peak with a spectacular sunset looking right at Fury which JT and I have tried and bailed on (long story) and can’t wait to get on again. I signed the register myself and we headed back down the ridge, me going first this time because I wanted Brad to get a picture of me with my Bruins flag.

I had left the flag in my climbing accessories bin for some reason, and decided Friday night “yeah, why not” as I was packing. We were freezing cold and eager to get down so we didn’t set up the picture perfectly (I didn’t want to make Brad wait for me to get back to the false summit while he stayed on the true summit which would have been the perfect shot) but it came out okay. We walked back down the talus and took a gully down the north side of the ridge to a snowfield that we could walk across almost all the way back to camp, way faster than trying to talus hop.

The last of sunset over a sea of clouds

We made it back to camp just before true dark. The snow we had put in the pot had melted (yes!!!) so it was quick to boil and we had our meals and went to sleep. Brad forgot his sleeping pad, so I gave him some shit and went to bed only to realize an hour later that my sleeping pad had a leak, and wouldn’t stay inflated. So we had a few hours of fake sleep. Pseudonaps. Brad got up at like 2am to take pictures which I half slept through and probably wouldn’t have remembered at all if he hadn’t asked the next day.

First light on the southern Pickets

The dumbest bird in the world woke me up. I had heard it the prior night and thought the other party was making animal noises, or a marmot was being tortured. I still have no idea what this bird was (I’ve listened to more bird calls in the past 30 minutes than in my life to date) but it’s the most effective, obnoxious alarm ever. It was already getting light (yay summer!) and we strapped on crampons, grabbed ice axes, and started across the snowfield. My ankle started bleeding quickly due to another separate ankle issue despite my thick socks, but whatever. I need new boots but I’m sooo lazy and sooo cheap so I sucked it up minus the silent crying and figured I’d bitch about it later. Crampons are amazing on steep wet heather, but sidehilling is still miserable. Back at the shoulder we found the couloir to be softer than the prior night, which made for a fairly easy descent though I couldn’t truly plunge step it so I had to go for the awkward hobble side step. I alternated between that and glissade-to-self-arrest to speed it up.

Fury, you magnificent bastard!

Small bear print?

Back in Access Creek Basin we switched back into trail runners. Oh my ankles were so happy. My feet not so much but at least it was slight progress. We followed a similar trail back to 3,700ft where we crossed to the north side of Access Creek again. You can see where the forest starts and the slide alder ends on the north side while you’re talus hopping on the south side, and that’s where you want to aim for the crossing. Yeah, you’ll have to fight through some slide alder to get there.

On the way down we stayed higher above the creek, and actually found parts of the boot path! Or maybe it WAS the boot path. In which case the boot path is more of a sporadic suggestion, a “hey go this way for 15ft it might be nice” until it disappears and you curse the North Cascades for being so lush and healthy and green and dense. We were back in the land of bugs, and the mosquitoes and flies started to swarm. We saw the occasional blaze but I swear they only marked the obviously trodden sections of bootpath, not the “ok do we cross this marsh or do we push through the alder or do we go up and over that log” sections where you really could use them. But soon enough we were at the mouth of Access Creek which we waded (surpise!) and suffered the half mile schwack back to the huge log jam.

Waist high skunk cabbage

Getting back to the trail was a great feeling, until 20 minutes later when I realized that despite being well graded and mostly maintained, the exfil was going to be a tedious affair. My body was wrecked, my tendinitis was in full force, the flies flying around my head were like a lei crown except of bugs that kept getting stuck in my hair. It got hotter and more humid every minute as the sun rose and the trail got drier and drier as we got close to the exit. Brad sat down towards the end and I was like dude you’ll catch up (we had been booking it) but I gotta hobble to get moving again. So I started hobbling, borderline delirious, nearly out of water but too impatient and desperate to stop and eventually I resorted to the old, trusty”count-your-steps” until I reached the dock. Where I immediately threw my shirt in the water and wrapped it around my head like a du rag.

Reaching the lake was like finding Jesus. I could have cried and crawled to the water and laid my head in the shallows and curled up in the fetal position until my body temperature returned to normal but I pretended like everything was fine. I took off my shoes and put my abused feet in the lake and eventually Brad caught up followed by the whooping 3p party and we all jumped in the lake. It was freaking heaven. We hopped on their boat since we had gotten back early, which even meant we got a partial refund!

Finally cooling off my overheating & dehydrated body

Oh, but when the boat docks, you still need to hike like a mile to the car. Uphill. All of it. One of the guys did it in flip flops. I had gotten a second wind after lake jump, nap, and boat ride, and felt pretty okay. Turned out I knew one of the guys through SMR. Small world, two other parties on Luna and I am lucky enough to know someone in each. Running into no one is nice, but running into people you know purely by chance all the way out there is pretty damn incredible.

Everyone says the Pickets won’t let you off easy. And they haven’t. Cassie paid her dues via MCL, I paid mine via near mental breakdown last year (just after a close friend passed in a climbing accident, I lacked the mental fortitude for this no matter how badly I wanted it). Brad’s gotten off easy (lucky bastard). But the Pickets aren’t going to give themselves up for no work. It may not be a technical climb, but Luna is strenuous, and the bushwhack no matter how “non bushwhacky” if you find the “bootpath” is still a tedious affair, especially with no views to reward yourself. Only mosquitos and humidity and branches to bitch slap you.

Well, my Selfish Ten list is down to 8 (the other one I’ve knocked off is the Torment Forbidden Traverse). I’m not sure if I’m going to let myself backfill the spots I’ve opened. It has to be something seriously appealing in order to make that list. No you don’t get to know what the rest of them are. I suppose if I find another route I haven’t heard of, or one that I can’t climb yet but may be good enough for in a few years, then I’d reopen the list. But for now, two down, eight to go. And damn, was Luna worth it. Even with all the mosquitoes and slide alder and devil’s club and dehydration and flies and those mother. Effing. Log. Crossings.

Actual Beta:

Bring approach shoes and maybe even spare socks.

Bring bug spray.

Be willing to wade.

The log crossings are 48.8395, -121.2090 (huge logs, but ~0.5 mile bushwack to get to Access Creek) or 48.8451, -121.2164 (smaller logs but right where Access Creek meets Big Beaver)

The gully to the SE shoulder of Luna is the middle gully. There’s a narrow steep one on the right, a slightly wider slightly less steep one in the middle, and a broad mellow one on the left. Go middle. You won’t see all three until you’re already partially up the slope above the basin.

Tons of running water on the traverse this time of year. Only snow at Luna Col and higher, though this may change as it melts more.

The scramble really isn’t that bad. Exposed yes, but lots of ledges for feet and jugs for hands on the exposed parts. And you can drop to the south side and traverse for 50ft or so on an easy ramp (like a walking traverse not even scrambling) though it’s a 3rd-4th class move to get back up on the ridge. Or you can au cheval most of it! Yeah baby!

Luna Col is gorgeous. Camp at Luna Col.

*suckers, that doesn’t include the ~2mi round trip walk from the car to the dock. Ha!

Mike comes up towards Austera with Forbidden and Klawatti/Klawatti Glacier in the background

The only time we saw Johannesburg

I teetered awkwardly on the 12″ log over the river, cursing the dark and the water and my shitty balance and where did the huge log that used to be here go?! That one already sucked enough! Did it wash out, like the ski pole I had just dropped, whisked away into the darkness never to be seen again mere feet from the parking lot? We weren’t even really at the trailhead yet, because the trail post is on the other side of the river crossing. Mother. Fucker. And I had just been telling the story of Kacie who dropped her oatmeal in the river when we crossed the same stream back in 2016. And here I was with one ski pole, a subpar sense of balance, and three long days ahead of me.

Distance: ~20 miles

Elevation: ~11,000ft (8500ish, top of Primus)

Weather: 30’s and socked in, 50’s and sunny

Commute from Seattle: 2:30 without traffic, 4 hours for us because we couldn’t leave on time

Did I Trip: I basically tripped the entire boulder field. Mike had a nice slough ride. And Brad… did he not trip? No I think he had one good stumble on the boulder field too.

Brad coming out of the clouds

There were other casualties too. Mike broke his nalgene. Brad snapped a strap on his pack. Mike tore a sock. I had like 7 chapsticks and none had SPF (RIP my lips). We wasted like 40 matches. My roll of toilet paper was destroyed (not by poop, jeez). Many gloves lost their fingers. And yet somehow we found ourselves on top of two peaks, sunburns and blisters and walking sticks be damned. Anyway, let’s get to the trip.

Naturally we wanted to do the full Inspiration traverse, but this is not the time of year to ford Thunder Creek and the bridge is washed out. So we figured we’d head in from Eldorado, bag Klawatti/Austera/Primus, and head right back out the way we came instead of going up and over Primus. So we drove up on Friday after I got dragged into several extra hours of work due to everyone panicking about the GDPR (I work in internet marketing) which meant we sat in traffic instead of beating traffic which means we listened to the same ~80 songs on my recently played playlist over and over again. Apparently Mike listened to mostly folk last time he was in WA, and instead with me he got a solid rotation of Satisfaction (Benny Benassi), Over my Head (Sum 41), Despacito (Luis Fonsi??), and a variety of Eminem and James Brown. My family asked when my taste in music became so terrible. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that… 90% of it is bad.

Tendrils coming over Torment & Forbidden

We got started around 5am Saturday, an hour after I expected (this will become a theme). It took us several hours longer than expected to actually reach the boulder field, and then the notch, and then the shoulder of Eldorado. The forest is actually much better than it used to be. Much clearer trail, fewer trees to duck under (no more logs of sorrow!). I found a nice solid walking stick to use, and eventually deemed it Emily Stickinson as we bonded over three days. The boulder field is pretty much as I remembered it, except I didn’t have John’s happy bouncing face to follow dodging and weaving rocks. Instead I had only one useful hand, because the other hand was clutching the walking stick I knew I’d need for all the sidehilling to come, and the mental fortitude that comes with carrying skis everywhere because you don’t know how to ski.

Mike skinning to Klawatti Col (PC Brad)

Brad switched to skis halfway up the boulder field, but I had to put on crampons and continue booting because it was icy and I don’t have ski crampons (another recurring theme, continued from the prior week). The regular notch was good to go with its classic third class scramble move at the bottom which I assure you is more enjoyable with skis on your back, especially if you’re carrying a rope and a rack. I refused to take the snow ramp because I watched my buddy Sam tear an ACL going that way a few years back, so I scraped my skis along the barely melted out heather ramp on the side, sacrificing some polish instead of risking a fall. Nothing like the sound of scraping skis in the morning. There is another scramble that can be taken ~50ft lower than the usual notch, but I didn’t bother to investigate. Old habits die hard.

Mike moments before fall (I had a mid-slip-pic but this one looks better sorry Mike)

I finally put on skis at the bottom of the notch and we started skinning towards Eldorado. The glacier was very well covered still, and we actually never roped up for any of the glacier crossings. I finally noticed that The Triad has three freaking summits, hence the name (I always wondered). Clouds started moving in and I worried we were in for some surprise precipitation. We only had bivvies (Mike was cowboy camping, no bivvy necessary), so rain would have been less than ideal. We passed a couple of whooping skiiers coming down Eldorado who turned out to be our buddy Sammy Davis, who took beginner ski lessons with me last winter! Amazing how far we’ve come!

I went to go check out the composting toilet (it’s one of the 50 Classic Craps of Washington after all) but either it was buried or I didn’t look hard enough. You could see the south face of Klawatti from where we were and I could already see the open bergschrund, so that route was out, which was a bummer because that’s the route I had my eye on. We continued moving in and out of clouds, traversing over to Klawatti Col. Which is over a mile, even though it looks wicked close. And more up and down and slower than it looks, especially when the clouds close in and suddenly you can only see 7 feet in front of you so you stop and grumble about no views and wind is cold and Emily Stickinson is so heavy and whiiiiiine and wait for your buddies hoping they don’t have a hard time following tracks. Soon enough we found ourselves on the col that leads to Dorado Needle, where the clouds conveniently lifted for just long enough for me to realize we had traversed too high. Shit. I knew I would do this. Oh, and my right arm was wiped from repeatedly lifting a tree branch instead of a ski pole. Thank you, Emily Stickinson. Get swole baby.

Shitty pano of our K-A Col moat campsite

Savoring sunrise (PC Brad)

Brad was nice enough to take Emily Stickinson for a bit so my arm could have a break, and we dropped down a couple hundred feet and continued on our way. Luckily the clouds had mostly passed at this point and we had line of sight, which makes the traverse very easy. Until the last stretch to Klawatti Col, which was steeper and slushy, and being the skinning chicken that I am, I booted it. And I was validated when I heard a stream of F bombs and turned around to see Mike slow-motion slide out of view riding with a small slough. I dropped my shit and started running back. He was fine and also insisted on more skinning. When I get spooked, it’s back to boots. And I get spooked a lot. Skinning chicken, but I’m really good at walking.

At Klawatti Kol I took a look at the SW buttress route and decided I didn’t want to lead it. It was late, I was tired, I don’t know the stoke just wasn’t there. At all. So we decided to see if we could camp at Klawatti-Austera col to set us up for success on Primus and Austera. And we had heard that the North Ridge of Klawatti was a class 3 scramble, so we crossed our fingers for that. The traverse to Klawatti-Austera col felt like 10 minutes compared to everything else we had done that day. And upon our arrival, we found an easy way to drop into the moat and a sweet little snow bowl to camp in that was (somewhat) protected from the wind!

Brad scrambling the ridge of Austera

The view of Klawatti and Eldorado from Austera

We dropped our packs, set up bivvies, and started the 8hr process of boiling water for 3 people in a Jetboil that’s probably older than I am. The lighter didn’t work. The matchbox didn’t work. The lighter still didn’t work. The jetboil ignition hadn’t ever worked. Oh shit I got a match lit!! Get the shovel I need a wind screen! We dug snow coffins (Brad’s was legit, mine was half-assed, no, quarter-assed, and Mike slept on a mostly crooked rock), and watched sunset from the ridge. Oh, and I used my barely-utilized InReach to get a weather forecast from Simon, because we had two more days up there and if weather was moving in for real I wanted to know. But nope, forecast was still good. We can hope.

Brad & Mike on the false summit

We woke up to one of the best sunrises ever. Blue skies above us, sea of clouds below us. I spent all year dreaming of being above the clouds, and once or twice a year I get lucky. It’s an incredible feeling. Once again it took us an hour longer than expected to get ready, but soon enough Mike and I were racing Brad with his ski crampons across the Klawatti Glacier, looking out across an ocean of cotton candy clouds. It was pretty much line of sight to the base of the scramble, where we stashed our skis. I dropped my pack too, thinking it was an easy walk to the top. Dreams!

I topped out on the ridge and realized I would definitely want my pack, and probably the rope and maybe even rock shoes. I turned around to grab gear, and we scrambled along the ridge. I didn’t see the third class scramble, so we roped up thinking we’d pitch it out to the top. But the trip reports are right. If you follow an obvious ledge to the right from just before the chockstone notch, it’s an easy third class scramble to the false summit. Barely third class. Once around the corner I laughed at the fact we had roped up. But the rope helped with the final notch, which was full of snow and ice. And I was in rock shoes. Which aren’t great on snow or ice. Oops.

Brad skiing down from Austera

Identical except better photo of me skiing down Austera (PC Brad). If only the lake were melted out!!

I downclimbed into the notch, choosing to stay roped up for the short “traverse.” No one had brought ski boots or crampons or an ice axe, all of which would have made this a piece of cake. The first few steps were wicked icy but Brad had forgotten to take the shovel out of his pack, so I chopped small steps for my rock-shoe-clad feet. Beyond that, it was bucket steps in slush and then 6′ of soft steep snow, and I self-belayed with the shovel (bomber anchor, guys) to a pseudo-stem-across-a-small-moat-onto-a-ledge move. Supposedly there’s a 5.7ish slab move to deal with when it’s all melted out, but it was buried in snow and I preferred our moat hop. I set up on the summit and alternated hip belay/using the rope as a hand line for the others to get across. I was whooping and shouting back to them about the peaks we could see – “Guess what that pointy one is?!” GOODE!” “AND THE HUGE MASSIF IS LOGAN!!” I was going crazy. Everything’s amazing and so few people go past Eldorado even though there’s all of these incredible peaks and ridges back here!

Primus looking primo

The views back at Klawatti, Eldorado, and Dorado Needle are spectacular from Austera. And looking back along the ridge and all of the towers is absolutely wild. We searched for a summit register to no avail, and eventually traversed back over where we just downclimbed the scramble and ended up back at our packs. We had set out water bottles stuffed with snow in the sun to melt, and they had melted!! I know, we’re so smart. We chugged water, stuffed more snow in the bottles, and talus-hopped back to our skis.

And then we enjoyed 1,500ft of the best backcountry skiing I’ve ever had. Unbelievable. We hit perfect corn. Mellow slopes. Mostly covered crevasses (one bunny hop, which is good, because I can’t jump). And the backdrop. The fucking BACKDROP. LOOK WHERE WE ARE. You can’t help but look around and just start laughing because you’re in a place that’s so wild and so remote and so beautiful and so untouched by anything.

Mike and I stopped perfectly (PC Brad)

There are many slopes that look like they’ll drop onto the North Klawatti glacier, but the first real access comes at the ~6,800ft shoulder of Austera’s south ridge. I packed the skis because it was steep, uncomfortably slushy, and the runout was a cliff drop if you didn’t stop in time, so boots it was. Oh, and we had dropped a bit too low and needed to regain elevation anyway. Start packing. Good news is, Emily Stickinson is basically an ice axe except lacking the ability to arrest. But for self belaying (stupid fancy phrases for basic techniques), walking sticks work pretty damn well. Like an alpenstock.

I booted up and north for what felt like ages and finally came to rest at the bottom of the mostly flat basin below Primus. Brad and Mike were switching to skins a few hundred yards behind, so I sunscreened up, mushed my shirt into the snow to try and cool down, and decided to brush my teeth, which I neglected to do that morning. Brush brush brush. I giggled surveying my surroundings. Bet this is the coolest place I’ve brushed my teeth.

We skinned to the base of the slopes and I pitched the idea of ditching all of our heavy crap. Ten minutes later, we had a pile of puffy jackets, a rope, small alpine rack, goretex, stove, spare snacks, a mini yard sale. And light as feathers (hahahaha not) we started skinning up the face of Primus.

Brad and Mike coming up Primus

At first it was awesome. Perfect zig zags, avoiding the occasional rock island. And then it started getting hot. Really hot. And there’s no shade. And everything is reflecting at you. It’s basically a bright white desert except you can roll around to cool off briefly. I hit the talus around 400ft from the summit, thinking 400ft was a lot closer than it actually is. And the talus was shitty, rubbly, everything-wobbles-when-you-step-on-it talus, not fun rock hopping talus. And I lost the bottom half of my whippet. And dragging a huge walking stick in one hand is tedious and means you can’t really use your hands. Dammit, Emily. But I had packed the skis and didn’t want to unpack, so I sucked it up until I met Brad, who had passed me skinning. Stashed the skis, and walked up to the summit, which was like a football field you could totally camp on. Besides the huge slumping cornice, so we didn’t get a great view of the Borealis Glacier, but seriously, everything is still amazing.

Beautiful place for a memorial.

There was no summit register. We found a glass jar, and expecting a celebratory list of names I was rendered speechless as I slowly realized what it was. Hmm, a jar, not a brass register? Okay. One sheet of paper? A pic of a young kid? I unfolded the paper. “In loving memory of John V Yoder, Died May 10, 2016. Age 19. We miss you son.”

I sat there trying not to cry. I knew if I spoke I’d cry so I didn’t. I had only ever been up and around Eldorado with my friend John, this trip I was doing was supposed to be with John, a different John but still a wonderful John who was ripped away far too early in an unexpected accident in May a year after John Yoder. I do not know this family, I probably never will, but they just got one more person in the world to know their son, and that’s a hell of a good way to remember him. Hopefully they’ve gotten closer to finding peace (not sure you ever truly get there, but everyone kept telling me to find peace so who knows). I’ll never know why they chose Primus, but it’s one of the most remote and beautiful places in the North Cascades and I hope the jar hangs out up there for a long time.

Summit nap

I pulled myself together as Mike caught up and whipped out a summit brownie (no, not of the pot variety) that Brooke had made a few days earlier. At least I don’t think she snuck anything in there besides whatever crack she uses to make desserts so delicious. It was a little mushy and a little warm and we split it three ways and it was the best god damn brownie I’ve ever had in my life. Chugged some Mio to rehydrate, took summit naps, and got ready to ski.

Aaaaaand bring on the next best 1,500ft of backcountry skiing I’ve ever had. Light packs, untouched corn, ridiculous scenery, sunshine and fresh air and the whooping of friends as we party ski down (Mike skiied too fast for pics) to our gear pile on the glacier. We’re so lucky. I don’t know why I climb. Most people seem at least capable of enumerating their reasons, but I either have 500 sort-of-reasons (views, workout, escapism, community) or no reasons, because my favorite hobby has also caused the worst days of my life, during which none of the above mattered. All I can say is that more often than not, I love every minute I’m somewhere like this, I just occasionally have to make sure I’m out there for the right reasons.

We repacked our bags, skiied to the shoulder that wraps around the south ridge of Austera, and booted it. And we actually booted it all the way back to camp. Even after we were back on the Klawatti glacier, it was so slushy and steep enough skinning would have been a pain in the ass, so we made a staircase back up. And when it mellowed out, I was too lazy to transition (you get in a rhythm with booting you know?) and carried on with my steps.

Brad skiing Primus

Heading back to camp. Too lazy to transition.

Oh, and there were ice worms! I hadn’t seen those bad boys since Glacier Peak! They come out at dawn and dusk, and while it was still bright and sunny at 3pm they were getting more and more dense as more came to the top of the snow. We marveled at the tiny creatures and apologized for stepping on some of them. We scrambled back over the ridge (3rd, maybe 4th class move? I handed Emily Stickinson to Brad so I could use my hands) and dropped down to our bivvies (after javelin-throwing Ms. Stickinson off the ridge into the moat). Ahh, so satisfied. Besides the fact that this alleged third class scramble route on the North Ridge was completely evading us. I couldn’t even begin to make out where it might start (unless you can hop some schrunds earlier in the season). I think the SW buttress would have been the route to do it anything, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to pitch out a legit climb with one rope of 3.

In some separate world, glaciologists make six figures and I’m a glaciologist. But in this world I have a desk job until further notice. And I use the weekends to pretend I know things about glaciers. This was a sweet trip because you cross five glaciers (six if you drop onto Borealis after Primus!) and end up on some of the most rugged, wild terrain in Washington, maybe in the lower 48. Wait until I retire. I’m going to get to so many glaciers. Unless they die first.

Sunrise on Memorial Day

I got all snuggled in my sleeping bag while the sun set and announced that I love my life. We’re so freaking lucky. Well, Brad and I were lucky. Mike had had “Despacito” stuck in his head for two days at this point and was probably quietly going insane. And I rescind my prior statement about being so smart, because if we were smart we’d have brought a black trash bag to fill with snow and melt on the rocks while we climbed so we’d return to water instead of hours of jetboil chores. A watched pot never boils and by that logic… well maybe not all of our water actually boiled. I had a several hour staring contest with that stove. I demolished some spicy pumpkin seeds, had some dehydrated food, and topped off the night with a cup of tea courtesy of Mike, who carried like 40 tea bags on the trip. MVP.

We woke up and figured we’d use the whole day for leaving, thinking we’d need all day to get down given how long it took us to get up. That was false, since we got moving around 6am and were out around noon, maybe a little later. We started an hour later than intended again, but I’m chalking it up to the difficulty of putting contacts in our eyes when it’s windy and you’re just in a bivvy. Crux move of the trip. JUST STICK TO MY EYEBALL DON’T BLOW INSIDE OUT whyyyyy you gotta be like that?! I saw Brad fighting the same battle a few minutes later. Everyone get Lasik.

Brad takes a break below the east face of Eldorado

Back at Klawatti Col I took one last look at the SW buttress to be positive we didn’t want to give it a shot. The stoke still wasn’t there. How can I have so much summit fever and so little motivation at the same time?! I think if I had known more about the route maybe I’d have been more into it, but all I had was a vague “it starts as 5th class, then 4th, then 3rd class.” Blah. Next year. Plus that way I have an excuse to come back here, and I bet Klawatti could be done in a long day (JT, you reading this?).

The skin back over to Eldorado was even more scenic than the way in because the clouds were lower instead of socking us in with ping-pong-ball views, and besides a brief sting of why-am-I-carrying-skis-and-rack-and-rope grumpiness I was in my happy place. We debated climbing Eldorado just for kicks (or turns) but I was concerned about getting down in time since we were about to drop into whiteout and the stoke wasn’t there, so we kept moving.

Glacier Peak and Eggplant (hahahahaha I know I know) in rolling clouds

Skiing down to the notch was amazing and terrible at once. I don’t like skiing in whiteout on glaciers. But despite stopping every four turns, we still got to the notch in what felt like 15 minutes compared to an hour or more on the way up. The scramble up was easier than the way down, and we dropped onto the boulder field and put skis back on. Except this was low angle and sticky and gross. After a few turns I wasn’t feeling it. So I packed the skis.

They told me there was no way booting was faster than skiing. So I started jogging, and eventually lost them while they negotiated trees and rock patches and I assume the occasional wipeout? I finally waited at the official end of the snow until they packed the skis and caught up, and we took a short detour through the forest west of the boulder field (which is open, for now) before popping right out in that terrible-slide-alder-or-slabby-scramble section of the boulder field. From there, it was navigating boulders and scraping skis off every fucking rock and cursing Emily Stickinson until you’ve gone emotionally numb from stress and anxiety and guilt over destroying thousands of dollars of gear and finally you’re back at the forest.

Skinning with Purpose

In the forest we decided it was every man for himself, we’ll meet at the car and backtrack to the trailhead if anyone takes too long. So I took off. That meant no one was there to see me au-cheval the log crossing because I was fed up with balancing and I wasn’t about to lose my other ski pole. I laughed at the people in the SUV who drove by and stared as I stepped out onto the road from the bushes. I made it back to the car, stashed Emily Stickinson with her new friend, another stick that had to have been used by someone else as a walking stick because it was too perfect (Charles Stickens?), changed into new clothes, and threw my car camping setup on the ground for naps. And ate the half pound of pulled pork I had left in the car. That’s right, for three days. You can judge me or be awed by the immune system of steel, I know you’re jealous. IT WAS DELICIOUS. And I didn’t die, so I think I’m in the clear.

Bonus pic of me skiing Primus (PC Brad)

Brad popped out 10 minutes later as did Mike, and we piled our stinky ass gear into the trunk and marveled at the damage we did to our feet. Thank the sweet baby Jesus for flip flops. And there we were, headed back to Seattle! It’s a crazy feeling getting back to civilization after a trip like that where so much of it is just you and the mountains and views and silence. Finally took advantage of a three day weekend, and waking up above the clouds two days in a row is a pretty damn good deal. I think the skis are hung up for the season (I’m too lazy for Turns All Year guys I know), but that just means it’s time for rock climbing and trail running and maybe even some biking. So much to do, so little time!

Oh, and I think I’ll be buying some ski crampons. Waking up every morning carrying skis cramponing crust while Brad got to have them on his feet was mildly annoying. Skis weigh a lot. My back and shoulders hurt more than the rest of my body the next morning. Yes, I know, my pack doesn’t fit great if that’s the case, but I think with enough weight there’s no such thing as a perfectly fitting pack.

I wanted a lazy overnight trip because I had barely unpacked or organized anything after moving into my new house on Wednesday. Luckily Brad was willing to wait an extra morning to have company, so I got to spend Friday night and Saturday morning making my house look habitable and we took off around noon on Saturday after I even managed to knock out a St. Helens blog post. How’s that for a productive morning?!

Distance: ~11 miles (13 because we went up and down twice)

Elevation: 5,000ft gain, 8,321ft highest point

Weather: 40’s and rainy, 60’s and sunny

Commute from Seattle: don’t look 4:41 with no traffic

Did I Trip: Nope!! Slipped on skins a bit in slush but no faceplants thank you very much

Indian paintbrush and… a yellow wildflower!

We got started from the trailhead around 5:30pm, taking advantage of the long summer day to get up to camp. We were planning on camping on the ridge, but the approach took longer than we thought. Or we left later than we thought. Or (my excuse) the drive was way longer than I thought. And when we got to the trailhead, the road was blocked off with caution tape. Shit. We looked at each other and said fuck it and ducked underneath it. Falling trees be damned. We hoped they were just talking about the trees near the parking lot and campground.

Abernathy in the clouds above Scatter Lake

We started booting it up the trail, skis strapped to packs. The trail was low grade, pleasant, winding through green forest with intermittent sunshine and drizzle. Wildflowers were out! You could smell the pine needles in the air. We started to panic. Where the hell was the snow? We thought it was a 3 mile approach to the lake and it had been almost two hours. Shit. A) we’re still not at the lake and B) Where. Is. The. Snow. What if there is no snow?! The guy before us in the trail register said his destination was “snow!” but he never confirmed whether he found it or not! Oh god.

Switching to boots (Photo by Brad)

Skinning up as the skies clear

Luckily we ran into patchy snow and consistent snow soon after (~5,500ft). We continued to boot it because I’m too lazy (stubborn?) to transition and the snow was perfectly consolidated for booting. You finally break into sparse trees, but wait! There’s another like 600ft to the lake, and you have to make it a rising traverse from left to right or you’ll cliff out. It went on forever. Probably because the sun was setting, the approach was a solid mile longer than we thought, we were carrying skis because of my stubbornness, and you know when your’e so close yet so far? It was like that.

We finally got up to the lake just at twilight. The top of the peak was in clouds and we booted out to a rock patch on the other side of the lake to have a better starting point. I popped up my tent while Brad set up his bivy. I enjoyed a hot meal of chicken chili, first dehydrated meal of the year I think! I’ve barely camped! I boiled some water so I’d have a hot nalgene, and went to sleep. And slept like a baby. At least, once everything dried. The first hour was a little damp from the drizzle.

Standing there with his stupid ski crampons

My first alarm went off at 3:30, but the peak was still socked in by clouds and it was drizzling yet again so I turned it off and went back to sleep. The second alarm was at 4:30, and I dozed for 15 minutes before asking Brad if he wanted to give it a shot anyway. We started up just after 5, and holy crap it was the right choice. The clouds lifted and cleared as we got higher, and by the time we summitted it was blue skies and views! It’s a very straightforward snow walk up to the top from the lake. I stopped skinning halfway up because I was getting weirdly anxious skinning on crust and felt better in boots. Brad amazed me with his skinning confidence on the ice until I realized he had been wearing freaking ski crampons the whole time. Dammit Brad.

Horsheshoe cloud around Reynolds

We walked the “ridge” to the summit and savored the views for probably an hour. Scanned all the names in the summit register to see who we recognized, snapped pictures in every direction, mocked my friends with pictures because I had Alpine Verizon cell service, took some naps… gotta kill time until the crust turns to corn. We finally got impatient and I decided I’d just boot it down if it was still crusty. Ugh. So not stoked. So Brad switched to skis as I booted down the ridge.

Except by the bottom of the ridge, the crust was getting softer. And 100ft below that, it was feeling a little corny. And Brad shouted back up to me. It only gets better!! I stopped and clicked into my skis. Bring on the corn baby!

Skiing mellow corn (photo by Brad)

Seas of peaks

The ski back to camp was phenomenal. Hero corn (with a few patches of crust here and there) which makes you feel like an amazing skiier. And straight down the line of fall, at least for the most part. We were back at camp within minutes. We packed a little bit, had some snacks, and realized it wasn’t even 10am. Do you… what if we… we should go up again. Maybe just to the rocks below the ridge. It would be a waste to get back to the trailhead at like 11am. And so I skinned all the way up this time, breaking trail through slush (Brad’s crust crampon trail was too steep). I had second-summit-fever and wanted to ski off the top this time. I waited for Brad for a bit but didn’t see him, though I did meet the only other person in the area who was headed for the Northeast couloir of Abernathy, a dope ski that I’ll shred in my dreams but never in real life. He had been hoping to ski down that side and then hit up Gardner and North Gardener, never did hear if he was successful. They’re melting out fast.

Woo!

I finally just switched to downhill mode and took off to find Brad. I made my first turn and immediately set off a small slab avalanche that went right out from under my feet along with a shit ton of sloughing, which ran for a few hundred feet down a gully that was not part of the standard route, thank god. The slab was barely 8′ across so I ski cut the rest of the slope to send whatever else was left on its way and headed back down the way I came up. Spring skiing! After mildly shitting myself I skiied the lowest angle terrain back to Brad, who was just above the only other section I was concerned about. I told him what had happened and that we were doing this one in shifts. I skiied down to a tree patch that was out of the way if he set anything off. No more slab, but plenty of large sloughing rollerballs to ski through. I waved him down and we skiied the next section separately until we were on mellow terrain, where we cruised back to camp once again.

Back at camp

This time we decided to officially head down, since it probably wasn’t going to get much better up there. 2,000ft of turns isn’t too shabby for one morning.

We skiied more on the way down. I switched to downhill mode for the traverse down from the lake but left the skins on thinking we’d have flatter skinning ahead. Brad started down in walk mode. I passed him. Brad switched to downhill mode and took skins off. Brad passed me. I lost a skin and had to trek back up to get it. I put the skin back on my ski (why, Eve?!) and went back into walk mode. I practiced my telemark turns and grumbled about everything steeper than 20 degrees. We ran out of snow pretty quickly though, and switched back to booting it. Oh god. My feet. The hotspots were fine when moving, but getting moving after stopping for a few seconds was brutal. Oh, and Brad lost a ski strap. And then I broke a buckle on his pack. But hiking a few miles of what was basically summer trail with heat and sunshine and wildflowers… damn if it isn’t beautiful.

What is this tree?

I’m stumped (ha) by the tree on the left. I stopped dead in my tracks because it’s like a weeping willow, except it’s a conifer. It has pine needles. Those aren’t broken dropping branches, they just grow like that. I don’t know anything about the flora out here and I’m super curious what this is because I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it. Between this and the wildflowers and the dappled sunlight and the soon-to-be-stifling heat, it felt like July. It was hard to believe that we had just been making turns on several feet of consistent snow and that it was only mid May. Shoulder season is the best.

We popped back out at the trailhead around 1pm and went straight to Winthrop for burgers and cold beer. Ahhhh. And we enjoyed them at Old Schoolhouse Brewery, which is right on the river. I’m getting my Mazama cabin someday, just you wait. Maybe in 30 years after I’ve paid off this house. 2048. I’ll have a jumping off point for everything in the northeastern Cascades, the one corner I barely touch. Imagine coming from a sweet peak like this back to your log cabin by the river on a sunny day, it’s not even fair. Spectacular area out there, and just as wild as the west side.

Tony rocking the polka dot dress, stoked to ski down with Adams in the background

Helens before the 1980 eruption

Do you ever have that feeling where you have a moment of clarity and think “this is exactly where I should be right now?” That was me on this trip. At like 5pm on Friday after a brutal week of work/SMR/Peaks of Life/closing on a house, I heard from Eva that she had extra St. Helens permits. So I messaged Reid saying actually I was going to do St Helens, and Reid responded that he had bailed on Eva doing St Helens because of car troubles. Wait a sec, she’s the one who just got me a permit!! If you can get yourself to Seattle, I can drive the rest of the way. So around 9:30pm, Reid and I took off from Seattle, arriving at the Marblemount Sno Park around 1am. Skiied 5/12/2018. Oh, and I’m a day late getting this posted, because it would have been cool to post on the 38th anniversary of the eruption, which was May 18th, 1980. St. Helens used to be the 5th tallest peak in the state standing at 9,677ft (I think it even had a lookout on top) and has been humbled to a mere 8,333ft (debatable, I also head 8,365ft) and #92 on the list.

Distance: ~12mi (GPS said 11.5, WTA says 12)

Elevation: 5700ft gain, 8300ft highest point

Weather: 50’s, sunny, and wicked windy

Commute from Seattle: 3 hours if you leave at 9:30pm Friday (no traffic!)

Did I Trip: No but I went for a small slough ride

Sparse baby trees, fun skiing on the way down

We knew the rest of the group was starting up at 4:30, but we wanted to sleep and figured we could catch up. And also I had forgotten a headlamp.It was easily the loudest trailhead I have ever been at (worse than Snow Lakes off Icicle Creek) and I swear 90% of the people started up between 4 and 5am so I was wide awake by 5. We got ourselves rolling around 6:30. That’s like later than I get up on weekdays.

We hit snow maybe 1.5 miles down the trail at most, and could skin almost the entire way from there besides two melted out steps in the sparse trees at the very foot of the mountain. The route starts in forest, and the trees get smaller and sparser until you’re surrounded by tiny trees that I assume are regrowing after the eruption. The route itself is called the Worm Flows route, and it’s because when you look down from above the various gulleys the lahars flowed through look like a bunch of huge wriggling worms winding their way down to the forest. St. Helens exploded towards the north, blowing a large portion of the northern slopes and causing glaciers on all side of the peak to melt, destroying 70% of the glacial mass on the mountain.

We followed a gully up to the snowy slopes instead of the ridge the people in boots took, which was great until we ended up on a relatively narrow slope where we had to make kick turns every 50ft across the bootpath. In slush. Where half of the steps just slide out from underneath you. It was like I had forgotten how to skin. And The booters were catching up to us. God dammit. I hate when that happens. And the glissade chutes are miserable to cross because some are like three feet deep due to the procession of asses sliding down them day after day. But we finally found an opening to traverse to the wide open slopes to the right of the climbers route, which is where skiiers want to be, and from there on up it was easy cruising with a splendid view of Adams to the east.

Oh here they come, with fife and drum

I started to wonder when we’d catch up to everyone. IF we’d catch up to them. If they had started at 4:30, then they got a two hour head start and Reid and I weren’t exactly moving fast. Luxurious breaks, a battle with a tail clip, excessive kick turns in slush (thanks Reid for breaking trail) even finding sweet gear other people had dropped. a decent knife, a roll of toilet paper and some socks in a stuff sack, a ski strap, some sunscreen. If you’re low on gear, just go up Helens and you can restock. And chasing after Reid was reminding me of old trips with JT where they’re blazing trail and I’m just scooting along behind them wondering how I got out of shape and when will I be a great skiier.

Skiier with her mountain dog (Adams in the distance)

Anyway, right as I was fretting about finding everyone, I saw a dude in a polka dot dress sitting on some rocks up ahead. I’m pretty sure Tony has that dress. Is that Tony? Those aren’t his skis or his boots. It must not be Tony. At this point I had been staring for a solid 90 seconds and luckily, he recognized me! IT WAS TONY! I ran up to him. Yay!!! Best part of the day!!! And there was Eva (she has a great name doesn’t she?) and Stephen and omg we found them! We chatted for while about start times and why Reid and I were underdressed (usually people wear tutus/dresses for Mother’s Day) and Eva whipped out some spare swag she had brought up for inadequately dressed plebs like us.

The stampede

We started moving with Tony this time, who I hadn’t skiied with in over a year, maybe two years (is that possible? I hope not. Tonyyyyyy).We caught up on everything we had missed over the past year. His son crushing it skiing, both of us getting new jobs, new ski setups, the adventures we had gotten to over the past few months. I was so happy. Chasing Reid up mellow slopes, snapping pictures of Tony coming up with Adams in the background, knowing we were heading to the “summit” to see a sweet crater and meet up with a bunch of other friends.

We took a detour to a small saddle in the ridge where we knew we’d be able to stand on rock (as opposed to cornices) and look into the crater. Honestly this detour was the best part of the trip (sorry Tony). The views are just spectacular and you can see all of the dead trees pushed into Spirit Lake by the eruption drifting from side to side (like algae in a pond except on a massive scale) and the crater spouting steam and it’s just wild thinking this used to all be connected and 1,300ft higher and surrounded by old growth in every direction. And now you have a mixed age forest on the south side and a recovering wasteland on the north side.

Looking west towards the true summit center (not left). The Crater Glacier wraps around the bump in the bowl, and is one of the few glaciers still growing! It formed in <16 years and is one of the youngest glaciers on Earth, still advancing at 4″/day. The south side was split in half by a lava flow at 2004 (still active!)

You can see three tiny people on the cornice

We skinned over to the false summit where everyone was sitting and I got to say hi to like 20 people that I knew, including a few people that I have known for years (my plethora of “internet friends”) but finally got to meet in person! We ate all of the snacks, Eva had brought her ukelele and we had some summit singalongs, there was a 64oz flask (it was huge!) of margarita being passed around (wait maybe that was the best part of the day), it was amazing. Easily the most low key, social summit I have ever had. Reid had told me it’d be a party up there and people would be hanging around for a while but wow. It was packed. But the cool part about skiing it is you pretty much take a separate route – you can watch the DC-like cattle trail of climbers, but you’re far enough away that it feels like you only ran into a few people, besides the actual summit. And then you look left at the masses and remember there are 500 permits a day and you’re forgetting about the other 491 people on the mountain.

Party time baby!

We pulled skins and convinced Tony to start down with us and meet Tracy at the first rock band when she decided to leave the summit. He agreed and it was party time!! 5,500ft of mellow, awesome terrain, a little grabby but can I really complain? It was fantastic. I had to stop to make a boot adjustment at one point when my calves cramped like mad (I had to sit and undo everything and wail for a few minutes) but I think it was just a new boot issue because as soon as I had loosened the feet and tightened the ankles they felt much better. Wrapping around a small ridge looked easy but proved to be like those American Ninja Warrior stunts where you need to jump and then wrap your body around the hanging cylinder and needless to say I could not bear hug the snow and I took a ride with some slough. But the slope was small and the runout was fine so it was more of a ” 😐 ” mildly inconvenient situation than a “EVERYBODY PANIC” situation. It wasn’t until I managed to get a ski loose (easier said than done when your feet are under sliding concrete snow and still locked into 5′ long boards) and flip it horizontally that I came to a stop. In hindsight if I had stood up I probably could have skiied right out of it but I don’t have skiier instinct yet and I assume that’s easier said than done too. The fact my skis didn’t pop off says how mellow it was though. Like a slow awkward glissade with my new snowball friends.

View of Rainier, Spirit Lake, and Dog’s Head (part of the crater rim)

I popped up and skiied over the lower part of the ridge (way easier) and we continued on our way down. We found a sweet short slope no one had skiied yet that might have trumped the earlier moments and been the real best part of my day. I almost have a harder time skiing the super mellow stuff, especially with these new boots that seem to still have so much ankle movement even in downhill mode. But this short slope was the perfect steepness to actually turn and I wish it had lasted forever. Whatever my sweet spot is right now, that’s what that slope was.

Out through the trees (I’ve started to love tree skiing) and cruising down the trail (Which is like 10ft wide, super easy to ski) until we finally hit dirt. Reid skiied some moss and some pine needles (“all backcountry skis are rock skis!”) while I switched back to booting it. We only walked 20 minutes, maybe 30 before being back at the parking lot.

Yard sale at the car (Photo by Quinn)

We found Quinn waiting by the cars, and decided to hang out until everyone else got down. I think we waited 3-4 hours, but that meant lots of time for snacks and water and naps and I didn’t want to drive back at 2pm because that would be a waste of an afternoon! Everyone else finally arrived and we hung out for a little bit longer before going our separate ways. If I had known this is how chill Helens would be I’d have brought chairs and a grill and burgers or something. Some of the cars were basically tailgating and it would have been so much fun after a sweet summit and a sweet ski.

I can’t thank this group enough. Eva and Reid are the MVPs, Eva for getting enough permits for me to snag one last minute and Reid for keeping me company driving 3+ hours in the middle of the night and so I had a partner to sleep in with instead of napping and meeting everyone else at 4. And Tony you bastard let’s ski more. So that’s how I ended up on a summit surrounded by really neat history with hundreds of other people* including a dozen or so of my awesome friends.

The whole crew! All thanks to Eva, who climbed a mountain in a freaking ball gown! (photo by Mushtaque)

*Literally hundreds – 500 permits per day until May 15th, and 100 per day after that. St Helens always sells out, so even if a few people bailed, you can pretty safely assume there were still 400 people out there. I have one pic that has ~53 people in one shot, and it’s not even the summit shot.

The best half day ski you’ll ever have. Seriously. Unless you consider Muir/St Helens, but the views from Green Mountain are cooler. The views, that huge face, the ridge line, the lookout, it’s just spectacular. It’s a shame the lookout isn’t open over the winter. Skiied on Cinco de Mayo, 2018! Should have brought a sombrero.

Distance: 8.5 miles

Elevation: 3,300ft gain, 6,500ft highest point (so like 6,510ft with all the snow right)

Weather: 50’s and sunny

Commute from Seattle: 2:30 but Suiattle River Road is an eternity

Did I Trip: I don’t think so

Patchy snow

I convinced Brad to trailhead camp, so after an eternity of driving down the Suiattle River Road we found ourselves hitting snow immediately at the trailhead itself (perfect!). Seriously, purgatory is probably driving the Suiattle River Road forever. Anyway, I was in my bivvy in 15 minutes while Brad set up his tent. We slept until 5ish, and got moving around 6. I had no idea really what to expect, but I thought we’d hit snow as soon as we were on the open slopes above the forest, and I wanted to get above treeline.

The first part of the trail was completely dry, and we hiked up through beautiful green forest until reaching the bottom of the open slopes. We followed the trail though we later realized we could have just cut up an avy slope to meet the trail above us (lots of traversey switchbacks). It was intermittent patchy snow mixed with heather and slide alder, and we booted it pretty much to the trees just above the lake, where we finally took the skis off our packs, thrilled to be on consistent snow.

Skinning with Glacier in the background

It was icy to begin with, so the skin-ski down 50ft to the lake was a miserable 2 minute endeavor. From the lake we actually went left to the sub-peak west on the ridge, and make some nice switchbacks thinking we’d top out in this gully and follow the ridge east to the lookout. At the top of the gully we’d have to go up and over a steep icy slope, so I swapped skis for boot crampons and Brad clipped his shiny new ski crampons onto his skis.

Gracefully turning

It’s freaky watching someone skin with ski crampons. Only the inside edge of the crampons were biting snow, the outside teeth on the crampons weren’t even touching the slope because of how steep it was. I was booting after him, and suddenly he turned back pale white and just said “I heard a whoompf.” I hadn’t heard anything, but whoompf can mean that a weak layer in the snowpack just collapsed, and the slope is about to slide. I bailed back to safety immediately, leaving Brad to figure out how to turn around on a steep slope with ski crampons on his own. Better to be ready in case something does happen. But he turned around gracefully and we booted it back down ~50ft to find a better way up, which we did by skirting east of the patch of trees on the sketchy side of the gully, avoiding the gully entirely. We should have done that to begin with.

The lookout!

Topping out on the ridge was awesome, and I knew it’d only get better as we got closer to the lookout. Glacier Peak looks dope, but the real wild views are north and northeast of Green Mountain, so you don’t get them until you’re basically at the top. We could have skinned the ridge, but I hate transitioning, so I kept booting it because I thought the slope below the lookout was steep enough we’d have to boot that too and I didn’t want to bother changing around.

Brad coming along the ridge

The ridge was massively corniced, so we stayed far right. Up at the lookout we had snacks and snapped pictures to send to Surafel (there’s cell service up there once you get high enough which is crazy). And we marveled at the sloughs on the east face of the peak. There is SO much ski terrain up there. If I wanted a chill overnight, it’d be sweet to camp up there and just do laps. The south face was calling our names so we switched to downhill mode and party skiied it, rolling bumps of untracked spring corn with Glacier Peak in the distance. Holy shit, if I hadn’t needed to be back in Seattle by late afternoon I’d have insisted on more laps. I couldn’t believe no one else was up there, it was so perfect.

Who looks like they can ski!

Brad making turns! Sorry it’s crooked 😦

We put skins back on to get up and over the terrain around the lake, and booted it back across the patchy snow slopes. Took a shortcut down to the lowest switchback after noticing on the way up that we could have just walked down the avy debris. There was some wild evidence of massive slides that we couldn’t quite identify. There were some snapped trees and branches everywhere lying on top of the snow that looked like a huge slab had just knocked everything over. But there was not much snow left above the trees either. Slab a few months ago took them out? Huge glide avalanche in the recent few weeks? I was thinking if it was a recent glide then half of the branches/trees would be buried in debris (which they weren’t) but there was evidence of other smaller glide avalanches east of this patch so who knows. All I know is that you cross a bunch of avy terrain to get to the lookout, and I think we ended up choosing a good time of year to get after it because there was so little snow left until the lake. And while I complained about that initially, it’s better than risking being caught in an avalanche like the one that destroyed those trees.

Back to the lake!

We were back down by early afternoon and drove back to Seattle, lamenting the fact we hadn’t done laps. But I was stoked to have gotten in some turns up there. I had been at the lookout in fall (fall foliage!! ahh!) and remember looking at the face below the lookout thinking that has got to be a sweet ski. And we finally got to check it off the list.

I started out the day as a bitch. Anyone can attest. Grumpy cat in true form. I had several friends going up Fuhrer Finger and Gib Ledges, I hadn’t been out in the mountains in weeks, I wasted my Saturday in the city, I was stressed about work and exhausted from the past few weeks and just wanted to disappear and despite my grumpiest efforts no two day trips came together. So there I was, at 7:30am, nagging everyone to hurry the hell up after lying in bed awake for two hours wondering if I should just go solo.

Somehow no one smacked me across the face even though I nagged for another 45 minutes, and then whined about getting breakfast, and then grumbled when Haley thought she forgot her beacon, and then sheepishly confessed that actually it was I, Eve Jakubowski, who had forgotten her beacon. I drove my own humbled ass back to the cabin to grab it and met them at breakfast where I finally relented to the fact that this was going to be a very slow casual day. So I enjoyed my Denver scramble and my cups of tea and the facilities with running water and took a deep breath. Skiied 4/22.

Distance: 3 miles? Not sure.

Elevation: ~1500ft gain (6012 highest point if you summit)

Weather: 50’s and sunny

Commute: 2.5 hours from Seattle

Did I Trip: I did not trip, but I did pinwheel

Calvin crossing the meadows

We couldn’t figure out why everyone was booting it up the slope from the parking lot to the upper road until we saw a snow plow toss a fridge size snowball over a snowbank. Oohhhhhkay. We’ll boot up on the left too.

We walked the road to the forest, clicked into skis, and survival skiied down to the meadow while Tricia snowshoed around us. You only spend around 10 minutes in the forest, which surprised me. I expected to have hours of suffering because that’s how backcountry skiing works, you earn your turns with hours of suffering. And instead we were cruising through a meadow, took the last snowbridge across the creek, and boom we were at the bottom of the three couloirs. The Fly Couloir is the obvious one on the right. You’ll pass the bottom of the Zipper just left of a patch of trees about halfway up, and Lover’s Lane is still a mystery to me unless I’m looking at Lane from afar, but that’s okay because I’ll never ski that one.

Here we come!

I started switchbacking up in the sun through a mix of slush and ice. The slush stuck to my skins adding who knows how many pounds of shit to my legs and the inability to edge on ice, so really a lose lose situation. I waited for Calvin to catch up to me to take the helmet and ice tool off my pack that I had neglected to grab before (rookie mistake), and started kicking steps up and up and up. The Zipper looked prime and untracked, and I was a little jealous we weren’t climbing that. I paused briefly for a selfie, savoring Calvin’s F bombs in the background because he hadn’t put on his waterproof gloves. I forgot just how satisfying breaking trail is. I was in the zone. I freaking LOVE steep snow. How had I ever forgotten?! Next thing I knew I was hitting sunshine and then topping out. I snapped a few pictures, explored the mini-couloir at the top only to determine I did not want to scramble the rest of it, and dropped onto the south face to see how far it would be to the summit. Far enough that I didn’t want to go because going uphill without skis was like wallowing in nipple deep slush and a recipe for disaster.

Tricia about to top out

We had snacks and water and got ready to ski down. I flipped my boots into downhill mode and SNAP! I stared in disbelief. It had finally happened. My beloved Proclines had broken. Oh my god. I can barely ski to begin with, I can’t ski with one boot in walk mode the entire way. I took calvin’s extra ski strap and the velcro strap I had and jerry-rigged it so I had some semblance of control, but the range in those boots is so crazy it didn’t make much of a difference.

Side slipping like a boss (photo credit Haley)

I side slipped for what felt like ages. On soft snow, until I hit the shade. Then one turn. Then side slip on ice. Then another turn on ice. Side slip on ice. Turn. Shit myself. Slide on ice. Mega wipeout. Head over heels, is my ski above or below me, were there rocks below me? No, right? Okay, good, I came to a stop with my ski amazingly only a few feet away, and looked up to ski I had skipped the hard part. Awesome. Thank god we didn’t go after the zipper. I had forgotten that I don’t know how to ski.

Calvin forgot how to cross creeks

I was shaken, that’s really the first fall I’ve ever had while skiing. I clicked back into the skis, made one turn, then two, then three. Gave Haley my picket in case I wiped out again (you still have that Haley I know you do) just in time to wipe out again, and finally I decided to pop the skis off to walk to wider, softer terrain. Finally I put the skis back on, and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of it. To the point where I skinned back up to Haley and skiied down again. And then skinned back up to Calvin and Tricia (being ski-belayed by Calvin, which didn’t seem enjoyable), and skiied down again. With my one boot. Which I would always forget about until I had to turn left. Ugh.

We made it back to the gate just in time for closing, including a survival glissade (skis horizontal so you can glissade) back to the parking lot because everyone at the bottom was yelling DON’T SKI IT IT’S NOT WORTH IT. I’m not sure why, because the slush was so deep glissading was hard and walking was even worse. Like wading through quicksand. More swimming than walking. I was beyond happy to chug powerade back at the car.

Awesome half day, one of the best I’ve done. Definitely need to go back for a day with better conditions, non-broken boots, and the Zipper when I’m better at jump turns. Dare to dream!